British song writer and singer Olivia Dean has recently won a Grammy Award for best new artist. Dean was born and raised in London and loves to sing. Dean is known for her “velvety-lush” voice and “timeless” sound, her music often explores themes of love, heartbreak and self-discovery.
Some of her most famous songs include Man I Need, Dive, Reason To Stay, So Easy, Ok Love You Bye and The Hardest Part are only a handful of songs that she has written and sang. My personal favorite is Man I Need and Dive. Before her recent years of fame she started her career early as a back up singer for Rudimental at only 18 years old. She had her first ever signing in 2019 with Virgil EMI, with the song Ok Love You Bye. Dean is also an alumna of a prestigious BRIT School who famous singer Adele and Amy Winehouse studied at as well.
A year later during the world wide Pandemic Covid-19 is where her fame started. You may have heard about her “The Yellow Van Tour”. The tour was actually called “From Me to You”. The tour was in the UK to keep music alive. The yellow van had her name painted in black on the sides and under was a very beautiful white daisy. Driving through the UK she was determined to keep playing and performing, hence the name of the tour. Her purpose of the tour was to bring joy to communities during a tragic time to perform traditional with live music and which started out for just her friends and family turned into fans as well.
Dean was also awarded in 2021 with Amazon Breakthrough Artist of the Year and earned multiple BRIT awards. She also played and performed at a very famous concert known as Coachella along with some appearances at Glastonbury and with Jools Holland. Her next chapter of fame was an album called The Art of Loving last year that hit several countries including Australia, New Zealand and Ireland.
In 2023 she launched another album called Messy, with over 540,000 listeners. Not only singing and performing music the well known social media app Tiktok also helped her grow her fame and helped tremendously. Her songs Man I Need and So Easy (To Fall In Love) become viral earworms with 36.9 million monthly listeners on Spotify.
She is also known for her elegance on the stage. Listeners often take the time to talk about not only her vocal appearance on stage but also her outfits along with partnership Chanel and Burberry. She was also nominated for a Mercury Prize along with also getting named BBC Introducing’s Artist of the Year in 2023.
A list of accomplishments for this talented musician. Her list of achievements goes hand in hand with the work and dedication she puts into her music. The music industry hasn’t seen this rise of fame since Adele and many listeners and viewers are comparing the two. Both artists are very talented and have similar vocals. Other quick rising artists that you could compare this level of fame to would be Olivia Rodrigo, Justin Bieber and Whitney Housten. All musicians are impressive yet personally I think Bieber and Dean are my top artists, although Adele is hard to compete with.
Dean will be counting her career and tour into this new year. The 2026 tour is called The Art of Loving Life. She not only plans to tour nationally along with internationally, making lots of stops all over the world.
